January 29, 2001

AFFECTED: Domain Name System (DNS) Servers running various versions of ISC BIND (including both 4.9.x prior to 4.9.8 and 8.2.x prior to 8.2.3; 9.x is not affected) and derivatives. Because the normal operation of most services on the Internet depends on the proper operation of DNS servers, other services could be impacted if these vulnerabilities are exploited.

Debian Security Advisory DSA-026-1 - BIND 8 suffered from several buffer overflows. It is possible to construct an inverse query that allows the stack to be read remotely exposing environment variables. CERT has disclosed information about these issues. A new upstream version fixes this. Due to the complexity of BIND we have decided to make an exception to our rule by releasin the new upstream source to our stable distribution.

RHSA-2001:007-03 - Updated bind packages available - Some security problems, including a remotely exploitable information leak allowing anyone to read the stack, have been found in bind versions prior to 8.2.3.

January 26, 2001

Debian Security Advisory DSA-022-1- exmh - Former versions of the exmh program used /tmp for storing temporary files. No checks were made to ensure that nobody placed a symlink with the same name in /tmp in the meantime and thus was vulnerable to a symlink attack. This could lead to a malicious local user being able to overwrite any file writable by the user executing exmh. Upstream developers have reported and fixed this. The exmh program now use /tmp/login now unless TMPDIR or EXMHTMPDIR is set.

Infobot 0.44.5.3 and below vulnerability [Hack-X] - Any malicious user would be able to run arbitrary files writable by the user running infobot. They would also be able to recieve information or write, since infobot automatically replies the data the open() sent. A user would be able to easily check the operating system and gain other information